Psychology in Russia: State of Art (Dec 2018)
Polar Meaning-Building Strategies: Acmeological Characteristics
Abstract
Background. Personality is not simply an end product, but rather, it is a process. Terefore, empirical work on personal meaning-building should examine the genesis of meaning and provide a content-based description of personality in terms of personality traits. Such a description suggests a systemic view of personality, where the meaning-based approach is supplemented with the defnition of personality traits. Te value and meaning potential of personality encompasses three dimensions: worldview, behavior, and cognition. Objective. Te aim of this study is to identify the properties of personality, refecting the features of polar strategies of meaning formation in acmeological terms by age, gender, and professional characteristics. Design. Te present study considers the infuence of various acmeological factors on meaning-building and concentrates on its two polar strategies: adaptive and developing strategies. We developed nine bipolar scales of personal traits with sublevels by applying the semantic diferential technique. In total, there were 145 participants in the study. Participants were grouped according to three criteria: age, gender, and profession. Results. Te obtained indices of meaning-building strategies did not coincide in all the diferentiated groups, which clearly speaks in favor of acmeological dynamics of the respondents’ personal profles. We stratifed the sample according to the mean score of the basic marker of “life meaningfulness,” which enabled us to establish diferences in characteristics of actual polar strategies of meaning-building. Te respondents who did not fall into either of the two groups are “between the poles.” Tey ofen have an underdeveloped meaning-building strategy as a result of poorly formed ways of organization and actualization of personal meanings or the presence of a transitional form of situational conceptual initiations. Conclusion. Te personal profles that were identifed represent multifactor models of the personal value and meaning dimensions, which can predict actual meaning-building strategies using semantic diferential scales and indicators (“life meaningfulness” from the Purpose-in-Life test) and help researchers to reduce the number of techniques employed in their studies.
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